I mentioned in the previous post that the updated Smart Album has a very cool and powerful new feature; you can now control what it’s searching inside of, whereas previously it simply searched based on where it was created—even after you moved it.

I’ve upgrade a client Library that was organized largely on Smart Albums, and have discovered that the vast majority of them are pointing at the wrong place. How did that happen? Because we didn’t have the “Duplicate Project Structure” feature that you have now. Let me explain.

While on tour with Seal last year, I shot 24 shows and needed to edit those photos into very specific groups for very specific needs. I had devised an entirely Smart Album-based structure that allowed me to rate and keyword images and then immediately locate them in their particular Smart Albums. This worked perfectly.

Of course there was no “Duplicate Project Structure” command in Aperture 2, so the standard way to replicate structure (without having to rebuild ever single project every single time) was to create an empty Project with the structure you needed, drag that to the desktop, then drag it back in every time you needed a copy of it. This worked perfectly.

Until now.

The problem now is that every single Smart Album is currently pointing at its original home—the original Project that all other Projects were based on! So I have 24x5=120 Smart Albums pointing to the wrong place. Oops.

Fortunately it’s an easy (if not tedious) fix. Here’s a screenshot of a current problem album.

See how it’s current source is “06-27 | 04 Oxford, England”? That was one of the earliest shows, and the Project which I based all other Projects on. Fortunately as you can see, the other option, “06-30 | 06 Bournemouth, England” is also an option. That’s where the Smart Album currently lives.

So, just one quick click to solve the problem. 120 times.

I also had a series of Smart Albums that were in the root level, in a folder, disappear. When I did the import, they were simply gone. Very odd. So keep your eye out for little things like that. Nothing drastic, but it could be an unpleasant surprise if you’re not looking for it.

Oh if you’re interested in seeing those Seal photos, the main blog posts covering the entire European SOUL tour are all here (that will list all Seal articles on my photography blog).